The Direction of the Wind: A Novel(6)

“Bonjour.” Nita uttered the first French word to escape her lips in the faintest of whispers.

The woman glanced at a clock to her right. The hands were pointed to six twenty in the evening. Without looking at Nita, and returning to her magazine, she said, “Bonsoir,” emphasizing the last syllable.

Nita dropped her head, recognizing her mistake and wishing she had made more effort to learn French before she embarked on this journey. When she’d asked Rajiv to get her some French language-lesson books and CDs, he had not hesitated because she’d had such a long-established obsession with France that this request was in keeping with that. He’d had no idea she was planning for her life after him. Nita had learned in the mere hours since her arrival that trying to learn French from CDs was a far cry from having to speak it in daily life.

“Sorry,” she said in English.

The woman placed her magazine aside and looked Nita up and down. She had a name tag pinned to her blouse that read “Cecile.”

“Americaine?” the woman asked with a bored tone.

Nita shook her head.

“Londres?”

Again, she shook her head.

The woman sighed, tired of the game she had started, after only two guesses.

“English?” Nita asked as she approached the counter.

“If I must,” the woman said with a thick French accent. She eyed Nita’s sari, clearly unfamiliar with seeing people dressed in traditional Indian clothing. “Do you need help?”

“I need a bed.”

“How many nights?”

The question surprised Nita even though it shouldn’t have. She could not stay at the hostel forever, but she hadn’t really considered her plans beyond getting to Paris.

“Can I pay week to week?”

The woman shrugged. “Seven hundred and fifty francs a week.” She eyed Nita carefully before narrowing her eyes and saying, “Cash.”

The woman’s eyes widened as Nita pulled a stack of bills from her sari blouse. When she handed over some of the money she had just exchanged at the airport, the woman crinkled her face and held the bills with an outstretched arm as if disposing of a lizard. She gave Nita a key attached to a piece of wood much too thick and bulky to be placed in a pocket or purse.

“Key, you leave here when you go out,” she said.

Nita took the large key from Cecile’s outstretched hand and tucked it between her chin and chest as she grappled with lugging her suitcase up the narrow, winding stairway. Cecile returned to her magazine and made no attempt to help. Nita knew she was in for a massive lifestyle adjustment, but she would get used to it. She had to. Her new life had to be worth more than the one she had given up.

Nita unlocked the door to a large room with four sets of bunk beds. Most of them were unmade, with clothing strewn over them. She had not envisioned climbing a ladder in her sari and was grateful when she saw one lower bed in the corner with what appeared to be a clean set of sheets folded and resting on it. She sat on the edge of it and touched the linen. Scratchy, with pills on it. Another thing she would need to get used to.

What have I done?

She held her breath as she thought about the life she had walked away from. The people she had left behind. She calculated the time in Ahmedabad. Rajiv would have found her letter many hours ago. He had probably driven straight to the airport to stop her, but she would already have been in the air, moving away from her old life. Now she sat, weary and dirty from her travels. There would be no servants to draw her bath or go to the market, where they wouldn’t even need to pay for her favorite sandalwood soap and could put it on the charge account that she and Rajiv had at all the local shops. No, now she had money tucked into her sari blouse, knowing it was all she had in the world and that it would not last forever. She had moved from her papa’s home to her husband’s, and financial matters were left to the men, so she had never had any glimpse into them. For the first time in her life, she thought about money. How vital it was, and how much she would need to survive. She had no idea how much was enough, but she knew that for the first time in her life, she needed to get a job.

She yawned, the fatigue catching up to her. Before allowing herself to succumb to sleep, she pulled out some more francs from the wad tucked in her sari blouse and went to buy the toiletries she needed to wash herself before bed.

At the store, she was overwhelmed by the number of different soap offerings in the small sundry shop down the street from the hostel. There were dozens of them, their aromas competing, like a garden assaulting her senses. It seemed overly extravagant compared to the few choices she would have had back in Ahmedabad: sandalwood, rose petal, vanilla. She mentally converted the French francs to rupees and could not believe how much it cost to buy a single bar of soap! She wished she had brought these things with her when she’d left so she wasn’t doling out her limited money now, but it had not occurred to her because she had never traveled to a place where those items would not have been provided. Her money, which had felt like a fortune when she boarded the plane, would not go far. She’d never learned accounting and budgeting and felt helpless realizing how necessary those skills would be. She thought about how easy it would be to go back. Rajiv was a gentle and kind man. He would welcome her. She could say she’d temporarily lost her mind and agree to give him the second child he wanted, and she knew all would be forgiven.